MLB players should be able to refuse to go to Communist China

MLB has taken US players to Communist China in recent years and may plan to do so in the future. Players should be allowed to refuse to go for reasons including animal brutality. Who would want to engage in commerce with such a government? Or even share in a 'social institution?'

• Eleven rare Siberian tigers were allowed to starve to death in Chinese zoo. There are no laws in Communist China against such abuse.

BEIJING, March 12 (AP) - (Kyodo)—"Eleven rare Siberian tigers have starved to death at a zoo in northeast China over the past three months, state-run media reported Friday.

• 
• The 11 tigers kept at the Shenyang Forest Wild Animal Zoo, located in Liaoning Province's capital Shenyang, all died due to malnutrition, Shenyang Wild Animal Protection Station official Liu Xiaoqiang was quoted as saying by Xinhua News Agency.

He said the privately run, financially strapped zoo only fed the tigers cheap chicken bones, while it also kept them in excessively small cages in the wake of a mauling incident last November.

• Two other Siberian tigers kept at the zoo were shot dead during the mauling incident, bringing the total number of tigers to have died there since then to 13. The zoo still has over 20 Siberian tigers left.

Liu lamented that China's Wild Animal Protection Law does not provide for any punishment for irresponsible zoo owners who abuse the animals,

• while the Property Law gives zoo owners the right to keep them

• without interferences from

• animal protection authorities.

The Siberian tiger, also known as the Amur tiger, is a subspecies of tiger which once ranged throughout western and central Asia and the Russian Far East, numbering in the thousands. "... *****

• More, AP from Chicago Public Radio: "Four of the tigers were among 26 animals reported dead in January, according to the official Xinhua News Agency, citing a copy of a list it obtained from the zoo on Sunday. Xinhua said no reason was given for the deaths.

The list also included several species classified as being under state protection, such as a red-crowned crane, four stump-tailed macaques, a rhesus monkey and a brown bear, Xinhua said.

• The zoo has struggled financially, even withholding pay from staff, employees have said."...

More: "Siberian tigers are one of the world's rarest species, with just 300 believed remaining in the wild.

• Liu Xiaoqiang, vice-chief of the Shenyang Wild Animal Protection Station, a local animal protection agency, was quoted by the China Daily as saying 11 of the zoo's tigers died of malnutrition in the last three months after subsisting on a meagre diet of chicken bones.

Two others were shot dead by police in November after the

• hungry animals attacked a zookeeper, the report said....

Wu said the animals were kept in iron crates indoors because it was an unusually cold winter and the zoo had no heating. He refused to specify what diseases the animals had or respond to allegations they starved to death.

• The China Daily said the zoo was mainly privately owned, though the Shenyang municipal government holds a 15 per cent stake."...

March 12, 2010, ap report, "11 Rare Siberian tigers starve to death in Chinese Zoo," Breitbart

• March 14, 2010 ap report on Chicago Public Radio,"China Funds Zoo after Siberian Tigers Die"

March 12, 2010, "Tiger Tragedy: 11 starve to death at zoo," AP report from Sydney Morning Herald

• ap photo, 2008, Harbin Zoo in China, one tiger carries a chicken carcass tossed by a tourist.

• via discussion on the John Batchelor Show

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